May 8, 1984

Gunfire erupted this evening as supporters of rival presidential candidates clashed in downtown Panama City. First-aid workers and officials at Santo Tomas Hospital here said one man was killed and at least 23 people were wounded by bullets or rocks. By late evening, the plaza where demonstrators had gathered was empty. Pro-Government gunmen, carrying pistols and shotguns, warned they would shoot at anyone who approached the area.

Comptroller Bank Move Expected The Comptroller of the Currency will deliver an ultimatum to Congress within the next week, telling the legislators that, if they fail to enact bank-reform legislation by September, he will approve scores of applications for so-called non-bank banks, according to widespread reports in the banking industry. Such a move would effectively end the Federal ban on interstate banking. A spokesman for the Comptroller's Office, which regulates federally chartered banks, said yesterday of the threat: ''There will be no decision tomorrow. I don't know when there'll be one.''

The Democratic Presidential candidates campaigned vigorously yesterday toward a series of primaries today that are expected to determine whether the party's nomination battle continues or begins to wind down to an inevitable victory for Walter F. Mondale. Many party leaders say that by sweeping the contests today in Ohio, North Carolina, Indiana and Maryland Mr. Mondale could virtually assure his nomination and deal a possibly fatal blow to the candidacy of Senator Gary Hart of Colorado. A high party official, who asked not to be identified, added yesterday that increasing numbers of prominent Democrats were now rooting for Mr. Mondale in the belief that a sweeping success would free him and the party to begin unifying for the fall election. Hart Emphasizes Delegate Count Mr. Hart continued to insist yesterday that the delegate count was more important than the outcome of the primaries. Both he and the Rev. Jesse Jackson have threatened to take the nomination struggle all the way to the convention by using credentials challenges or floor fights to cut into Mr. Mondale's delegate total.

Major crime went up, ridership went down and passenger comforts - from clean windows to doors that work - became harder to find on the city's subway system this year, transit officials said yesterday. After an 18-month decline in reported felonies on subways, the number rose during the first three months of 1984. Homicides, robberies and assaults numbered 3,266, a 12.6 percent increase over the same period last year, officials said. The head of the transit police, Chief James B. Meehan, said he could not explain the increase.

An article on the Washington Talk page April 21, about publicity for liberal causes, misidentified a public relations man who is opening a Washington office. He is Richard P. Pollock.

Jose Napoleon Duarte declared himself the winner of El Salvador's runoff Presidential election. Mr. Duarte, the candidate of the moderate Christian Democratic Party, called on all Salvadorans to work to bring peace to the country. (Page A1, Column 1.) Violence marred Panama's election. Government officials said one person was killed and eight were wounded in shooting that erupted between backers of rival candidates who both claimed they had won the presidential election. (A1:1.)

PRINCETON,N.J. THE courses now drawing to a close for most college seniors are their last obstacle to graduation, but for a smaller number such as those at Princeton University there is an additional hurdle: the senior thesis. A sort of scale model of the dissertation required of doctoral candidates, the senior thesis is a special challenge that lets an undergraduate pull together the knowledge and skills gained the previous three years to produce scholarly work of the kind usually not expected until graduate school. ''It gives a student a chance not only to pursue a subject in depth, but also to accept responsibility for something of his own,'' said William G. Bowen, the president of Princeton. ''I don't think a seminar paper is the same, nor is it the same to sit through a course and take an exam. The senior thesis is the capstone to a student's education.''

IN a major child abuse study, social scientists have shed new light on the ways children are lured into sex rings, why they stay and the protective steps parents can take. The study, published in the official journal of the American Psychiatric Association, differs from others that have examined such adult-operated sex rings in that it focuses on the children's point of view and thus provides some answers to explain why children comply with the rules of a sex ring and remain silent about their participation. It shows that the adults who head the rings play on the normal interests of young children who are often in a period of their lives in which sexual experimentation is part of their psychological development. The adults lead them into joining what is in effect a secret society, frequently complete with ritual, to which they become tied by bonds of threats and fear on the one hand, and enticements such as drugs, alcohol and money on the other. Entrance into a sex ring, according to the research, involves the children in an elaborate indoctrination into the mores of the secret society. The children are taught to see the ring's activities as ''normal.'' The children rarely tell their parents or others of their participation, partly out of fear and partly because they learn to approve of a group that serves some of their needs for attention and belonging, the researchers said.

An article in Metropolitan Report on April 20 by United Press International about a lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre incorrectly described the suit. It was filed by a former employee of the diocese who says he was wrongfully dismissed. The suit contends he is a victim of libel and slander by a supervisor.

Averting a long-scheduled trial, seven makers of Agent Orange agreed yesterday to create a $180 million fund for thousands of Vietnam veterans and their families who said the herbicide had harmed them. Lawyers representing the veterans, in turn, dropped damage claims against the Dow Chemical Company and six other defendant companies that had mounted into the billions of dollars. The surprise settlement, which was announced in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, brought to an abrupt end more than five years of tortuous litigation. The award was the largest ever won by a class of claimants who sued for wrongful injury, according to lawyers for the veterans. Court Approval Needed The terms are still subject to final court approval, and some veterans said yesterday that they would challenge the settlement as inadequate at a forthcoming hearing. Those who did not wish to be covered by the settlement could exempt themselves, but they would in effect have to litigate the case themselves from the beginning.

When the American Can Company moved from Park Avenue to a pristine 181-acre tract here in 1970, it started a corporate trend. But now, after having spent the last half- dozen years radically restructuring its operations and slashing its headquarters staff, the company is planning to move again. With an asking price of $195 million, American Can has put the huge complex it built up for sale and announced plans to split the operations based here into two smaller buildings somewhere else in the nearby suburbs. Inside the structure that American Can now calls home, the underground parking garages, designed to hide 1,700 cars from any passing naturalist, are sitting half empty. The inside of its vast office corridors has the chilly sense of too many computer terminals, too many corporate cubicles and too many potted palms for the working population at hand.

Reflecting the concern of President Reagan's political strategists, the White House said today that the President had no plan to seek changes in the Social Security system if he is re-elected. John A. Svahn, former Commissioner of Social Security, who is now the President's assistant for policy development, said of the Social Security program: ''It's in good shape well into the next century. There are no plans to change anything in the Social Security retirement system.'' The White House statement was prompted by Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan's assertion Sunday that the system would have to be re-evaluated before the end of the decade to assess whether upper-income retirees should continue to receive benefits.